When Xulai woke in the morning, in deep shadow, the dawn still pale above the cliff, she went to the spot the woman had pointed out and found a tiny loaf of sweet bread, full of raisins and spice. Both her nose and the chipmunk told her it was good. By the time the others had wakened, she and the chipmunk had eaten it all. Though normally she would have told Precious Wind all about it, she did not. The Becomers had picked her, Xulai, to smile at and wink at and bake cake for. Like most mysteries, time might explain it, but before it was explained, she did not want her guardians keeping watch on her night and day. Their customary watchfulness was quite enough. Or too much.
Soon the others woke. Every person and creature seemed well rested. The parade of Becomers resumed as they breakfasted and went on until they had relinquished their robes and were above and beyond the village on the slowly rising road. Seemingly, the Becomers could not get enough of looking at these particular travelers!
That day, Xulai spent much of her time knitting. There was nothing else to do, and she wanted to make something for Black Mike and the other Woldsgard people to thank them for their care.
During the next day, they passed through six more villages. The Sky Becomers wore all blue clothing and painted their skins the same color, for the king’s favorite color was blue; the Perfect Becomers bound their bodies to change them toward an ideal form; the Song Becomers sang all their conversations with one another. There were also the Joy Becomers, a seemingly deadly serious people who invited the group to join them in sexual gratification and using mind-altering substances, following the wagons some distance on the road reiterating this invitation in voices, so Xulai felt, that were syrupy with duplicity. All the Becomers spoke of “her,” the woman who told them how they were to become treasured by the king. Xulai counted sixteen or so other villages crowded into caves at various distances above the road, connected to it only by goat paths and treacherous-looking stairs. If all these were being influenced by the Duchess of Altamont, she was spending a great deal of time amusing herself with a great many people who were playing along though they were not, themselves, either amused or convinced. Perhaps, Xulai thought, this fairly innocuous game preempted other games that would have been far more painful.
Above the Pure Becomers’ village, the way had grown steeper, the progress slower. The second night was spent at the eleventh switchback. Early on the third day on the cliff they came to the thirteenth turn, this one with another bell tower and space for wagons, like the one they had seen before. Several wagons and a flock of sheep were lined up on the road above them, coming down, and several other wagons, going up, had accumulated on the flat. The Wold wagons were waved onto the flat with the others by a bored-looking traffic controller, and there they sat idle while several loaded wagons and a flock of sheep went down.
“Last turn.” Ordinarily taciturn, Black Mike grinned. “Fourteen times across the cliff, seven goin’ north and seven goin’ south, and we’re up!”
By noon, looking down the cliff-side, they passed the six southern switchbacks that lay in a line beneath them. Each turn up to this point had been more or less in line with the ones above and below, but now the road beneath them continued to the south, still gently rising and shaking with a slight vibration. After a time the vibration turned into a low rumble, increasing in volume as they went until the world around them shook with continuous thunder. Opacities of fog came and went on the road before them. The drivers got down to lead the horses and mules around shrouded curves hidden by wavering, silken evanescence that twisted endlessly as they unrolled outward. Since they had only vagrant glimpses of the road before them, everyone but Oldwife preferred to walk, blindly clinging to the cliff-side on their left, watching their feet to be sure they did not approach the edge. On their right they caught occasional glimpses of the enormous cataract surging glassily over the precipice to break into a hundred separate falls on the ledges below. Momentarily, a gust of wind blew the clouds aside to let them see all the way down, multiple cascades leaping and frothing in a frenzy of foam and shattered stone.
The wind persisted long enough to disclose a colossal cauldron a mile or so below, a stone bowl licked out of the bedrock by a millennium of swirling water, maelstrom-filled from edge to edge. Fleeing this vortex, the gleaming, glassy torrent exploded through a narrow cleft in the western edge and lost itself within a wide black canopy of dripping forest, beyond which stood Eastwatch Tower, the watchtower they had left three days before, tiny as a toy.
Several wagons stood ahead of them on the road, waiting, and a bell tolled from a tower on the cliff’s edge as they went onto the downward road. It was answered by a far-off echo from the tower they had passed this morning.
Bartelmy said, “I can see why there’s no quicker way. What a drop that is!”
“One of the wonders of the world, I’m told,” said Precious Wind. “Certainly there is nothing like it in Tingawa.”
“Tingawa has mountains,” murmured Xulai. “So you’ve told me.”
“Lovely rounded mountains,” said Bear in a meditative voice he seldom used. “Like the flanks of maidens, lying at their ease beneath the sun. We have rivers, too, but none so impolite as to roar at anyone.”
“We camp here?” asked Bartelmy with a quick glance at the lowering sun.
“A bit farther, please,” begged
